Court issues non-bailable warrant against Mallya

Hyderabad(IANS): A Hyderabad court today issued a non-bailable warrant against crippled Kingfisher Airlines, its chairman Vijay Mallya and four of its directors after the GMR-run Hyderabad airport dragged them to court when a payment of Rs 10.5 crore could not be honoured.

“We had filed four cheque bouncing cases, totalling Rs 10.5 crore against KFA, Mallya and four directors of the carrier a couple of months back. As they failed to appear for hearing today, the magistrate issued an NBW against them,” an airport official told PTI over phone from Hyderabad.

The spokesperson also said that the money was to be paid towards airport charges and the airline had not been paying it for months.

The airline could not be reached immediatley.Earlier in the day, Kingfisher, which is battling for survival due to fund-crunch and employee strike, extended its partial lockout till October 20 even as it got a reprieve from the regulator DGCA as it has decided against revoking its licence.

Airline sources said the airline management, in an internal mail, has said that due to operational reasons, all flights across its network would be cancelled till October 20.

The mail came a day after Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Aggarwal appealed to all employees, striking over non-payment of salaries for seven months, to return to work to resume flight operations soon. The employees are insisting that the salaries be paid first before they resume duty.

Kingfisher had declared a lockout on September 28 till October four following the strike, cancelling its entire flight schedule, and extended it till October 12 later. This has now been extended till October 20.